


recessional in 3/4

by unhappyrefrain



Category: Umineko no Naku Koro ni | When the Seagulls Cry
Genre: F/M, I DID ANOTHER CHAPTER ON A WHIM AND NOW IM CRYING, catbox stuff, dont talk to me i just want my beabato, ep5 spoilers, from a fantasy perspective, it skips around a lot, weird zigzaggy timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-20
Updated: 2014-02-21
Packaged: 2018-01-13 03:32:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1211017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unhappyrefrain/pseuds/unhappyrefrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Battler remembers; Beatrice fades. </p><p>(Spoilers for EP5. From a fantasy perspective-- not quite spoiling the rest of the series.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. opening movement

Your name is Battler Ushiromiya and there is salt covering every part of you, every inch of your skin and encrusted in your hair like sea jewels and when you were thirteen you were happy about this. You are eighteen now and the taste of it on your wrists and cheeks is choking, agonizingly reminiscent. It brings you down when the seawater splashes from the inside of the boat across your face. 

You have only been pretending to scream since the first time you died. For the sake of continuity, you think dimly, and the boat revs, as if in spite.

* * *

The first time you died you hadn't known where you were. Everyone was dead, you had seen them all locked up in closed rooms that you couldn't even solve. You didn't know how chessboard thinking would work in this situation; trying to understand the thoughts of the culprit was almost impossible, even in the way Kyrie taught you, even in the way you taught yourself.

The witch in the portrait smirks, as if trying vaguely to affirm her own proud existence, and you don't remember after that. 

The report said "missing."

* * *

 "Those close to me call me Beato," she says, and somewhere, some other Battler Ushiromiya nods.

* * *

Once when you were younger you stared at her portrait for an hour and burned the image into your retinas before sleeping. You waited, and surely in your dreams she haunted, flowing down the dark corridors of your unconscious, wandering golden butterflies bursting in from nowhere. She never fully showed her face and now you understand why, as she faces you across from the chessboard and absently twirls a pawn in her hand while you think.

"Beato," you start, and she looks up from her small reverie and cackles.

"Sooooo, Battler? How can you explain my sudden existence after Shannon broke the mirror? Hmm?"

"It could have been a deliberate plot," you sigh, "another 'get me to believe in witches' ploy... But. But I definitely won't believe! I won't accept you! I won't I won't _I won't!_ "

Beatrice keeps her composure for all of two seconds before she doubles over, inelegantly wheezing with high-pitched gritty laughter, and as she leans back and looks at you from her chair you see an unusually sorrowful glint in her eye. It's not there for long-- she waves her small pipe around and scatters golden butterflies in the air, almost as if she's purposely distracting you.

"You will soon," she giggles. "Wait till you see this elaborate closed room I made for the next twilight!"

* * *

You meet Virgilia and Ronove in your third game and you can't deny how stunned you are by their demeanor. Compared to Beato, they're so... refined and oddly calm. It's so unsettling, and you feel part of reality unfastening itself from your careful, fragile jigsaw.

Ronove is ghostly, elegant and also quite snarky. He makes small offhand remarks about Beato while she's not listening, and they make you want to both laugh and slap him. (You don't know when exactly you developed this protective-opponent complex for her and you wish it would go away.)

Virgilia is quiet and never quite opens her eyes and you wonder how she could have ever dealt with Beatrice in the first place. She's so... gentle. Gentle, and motherly, and content.

And she doesn't look like she'd ever hurt anyone. It brings you back to the same question.

"Beato, why do you do it...?"

She doesn't answer. Virgilia only smiles.

"You don't remember what you did that day, Battler?"

You can't. You can't remember. 

* * *

Somewhere, some world, Beato hangs impaled by a gleaming blue stake.

* * *

 Your name is Battler Ushiromiya and as you weigh the heaviness of the envelope in your hands you also feel the weight of your life.

Life divided by haze, yes; life divided between a stable, bloody game board and a drifting world-within-a-world, but still-- one life. Or maybe one life divided by four, less time to live, each game passing through another quarter-- or more than that.

But even the weight of that fades when you slip on the signet ring and you feel the sheer mass of the Ushiromiya headship dragging your hand down in midair-- and with it all the fervent possessive love its last wearer held for her. 

Somewhere, you recall Kinzo wailing.

* * *

Your name is Battler Ushiromiya and in a garden bright with golden roses and a pitch-black sky, you watch as Virgilia pulls the Golden Witch's hair into a bun.

Beato is fragile and doll-like and her eyes are glazed with the sleepiness of death. She is only looking straight out into the distance and a few times you have waved a finger in front of her face, hoping (for _once_!) that this is another one of her sick jokes.

But it's not.

The small china cup of black tea is barely steaming, and you stay your hand over the top to check. Beato blinks, and you lift the teacup to her mouth, moving your own hand over hers for stability.

Her skin is colder than you remember.

You twine your fingers between hers and tilt the cup gently to her lips. She drinks, emotionless and still, but you don't take your hand off hers when you decide to set the teacup down again. In your own way you protest to her powerlessness, to your powerlessness, and you can feel the vein between her thumb and forefinger jump with life.

"Don't worry," you say, your voice on the verge of breaking, "I'll make sure of it. You will rest soon. And I will find the truth."

Beato makes a soft noise in her throat, one of no discernible emotion besides acknowledgment.

"I will find the truth."

Her lips part, ever so gently, but her eyes are blank as usual. Virgilia and Ronove have disappeared off to somewhere or other. She's polishing the chessboard; he's baking tea cookies.

You lean over and you kiss her, hand still on hers, and for a second you can't discern between fantasy and mystery, witches and reality, magic and trickery; all you want is her.

 

 


	2. second movement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beato, awake.

"Who... am I?"

The question slips out so easily this time, not teasingly or angry, but sincere. Battler's hands are warm around the back of your neck and with that kind of comfort, sudden and strange but effective, you can't help but finally question him.

(Like he would know. Like he could ever know.)

In a golden rose garden twinkling with dew, under a sky without stars, you bury your face in Battler's chest and weep.

This is the true mystery of this tale: why, after all this time, do you feel an extraordinary tenderness towards him? When he presses his dry lips to yours, do you not feel pain in your gut? When he absently curls his finger around a lock of your hair, hanging loosely from the bun Virgilia does every morning, why is it that you do not feel trapped?

"It's okay," he says, whispering, repeating, and you hold him tighter as another wave of sobs racks your entire body, "shh, Beato, it's okay, I'll protect you, don't cry, please--" and you breathe. So much pain, the truth of it all in your chest and stakes sticking out everywhere, not visibly but excruciating, and he cards his fingers through your hair and gently, gently lets it down.

It spills over your shoulders and onto your neck and the familiar weight of it nearly makes you collapse, but you don't, you stay upright and it cascades down to your back. You clasp your hands around his back.

Without love it cannot be seen.

* * *

You sleep, drifting between waves of memory, in the salt and sea of quietude. Sleeping in the Golden Land is just a temporary non-existence, a peace reserved only for death's warm hands. You sleep but do not dream, until a voice drifts past you in the pitch black night, something distinctly young. It materializes and then is gone, before you can reach your hand out and grasp the fragment of truth.

"Who... am I?"

There is no reply. Just you, lost witch, and the salt on your skin.

 

You understand why Virgilia still calls you a child.

* * *

Battler's hands are large and warm but his fingers are strangely thin, threading into yours effortlessly as you lean against him. He looks at you differently than Kinzo did, a softness in his eyes that you can never quite place. 

He burns just as bright as his grandfather, but his touch does not harm you.

You frown, and then look at him from the corner of your eyes, half-afraid to meet his gaze and half-anxious to see what dwells there, but he puts one hand on your cheek and turns you, slowly, quietly to him and you can't avoid it anymore. His eyes are half-lidded but he does not stare, he does not look for something that is not there.

He sees you, and you wonder if maybe this time it will be different.

* * *

"Battler," you murmur, as he kisses you, "Battler, Battler," between breaths and between the cracks of your memories, "Battler," you're doing this to stop thinking, to make sure nothing creeps into the crevices of your mind that could waste this because you don't, you don't want to spend a moment being distracted by who you aren't and who you wish you could forget you really are, "Battler," again and he pulls you closer, and you forget about the blighted possessive toxic love of a thousand years.

Now begins another rondo, steady and slow, the second movement of the symphony.

* * *

"Beato, have I ever made a promise to you I didn't keep?"

"Hah! I wouldn't mind dying now, with words like that..."

* * *

Never has this cage of flesh been so wonderful to feel, you think hazily, as Battler touches you. You breathe the warmth of his skin and ache beneath his fingers, the twisting in your stomach so serene.

(It's not like you, you say to yourself, but truthfully you've lived long enough and known so much sadness and not-love that right here, right now, as the sea of memory laps at the banks of your consciousness, you don't feel like pushing him away.)

* * *

You will kill eighteen people tomorrow. There are ripples on the surface of your saltwater heart. 

 

Vaguely, you recall an abyssal darkness, and a warm back pressing against yours. "You are my Golden Witch," he says, and at that moment, there is light.


End file.
